The Thin Red Line (1998)

Directed by

Terrence Malick

Cast

Wu Ruo Fu, Chang Rong, Li Xiao Lu, Liu Xiao Feng, An Ze Hao, Yao Qian, Chi Hua Qiong, Bao Lei

Genre

drama film, war film

Country

United States

Runtime

2h 46m

Rated

R

Rating

7.4 of 10 from 3,340 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

American soldiers fight in the brutal Battle of Mount Austen during World War Two. The film follows their internal struggles and the natural beauty that surrounds the conflict.

contemplativepoeticsolemnmeditativevisceralhauntingimmersiveintrospective

What happens

The Thin Red Line is a 1998 American epic war film written and directed by Terrence Malick. It is the second film adaptation of the 1962 novel by James Jones, following the 1964 film. Telling a fictionalized version of the Battle of Mount Austen, which was part of the Guadalcanal campaign in the Pacific Theater of the Second World War, it portrays U.S. soldiers of C Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, played by Sean Penn, Jim Caviezel, Nick Nolte, Elias Koteas, and Ben Chaplin. The novel's title alludes to a line from Rudyard Kipling's poem "Tommy", from Barrack-Room Ballads, in which he says British foot soldiers are called a "thin red line of [h]eroes", referring to the stand of the 93rd Regiment in the Battle of Balaclava of the Crimean War. The film marked Malick's return to filmmaking after a 20-year absence. It co-stars Adrien Brody, George Clooney, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Jared Leto, John C. Reilly, and John Travolta. Reportedly, the first assembled cut took seven months to edit and ran five hours. By the final cut, footage of performances by Bill Pullman, Lukas Haas, and Mickey Rourke had been removed (one of Rourke's scenes was included in the special features outtakes of the Criterion Blu-ray and DVD release). The film was scored by Hans Zimmer and shot by John Toll. Principal photography took place in Queensland, Australia and in the Solomon Islands. 20th Century Fox premiered The Thin Red Line in Beverly Hills on December 22, 1998, and released it in a limited release on December 23, 1998, before a nationwide release on January 15, 1999, and grossed $98 million against a $52 million budget. The film received positive reviews, with critics praising its philosophical depiction of war, Malick's direction and screenplay, musical score, cinematography, editing, and performances of the cast. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, and Best Sound. It won the Golden Bear at the 1999 Berlin International Film Festival. Martin Scorsese ranked it as his second-favorite film of the 1990s. On At the Movies, Gene Siskel called it "the finest contemporary war film I've seen." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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